The London-based label presents its most comprehensive and realized collection to date, even having Tommy Cash walk the runway.
Before Jordan Bowen and Luca Marchetto unveiled their Spring/Summer 2024 show at Milan Fashion Week, the chatter was bouncing off the walls, reverberating about how fantastic the collection was going to be. It begged the question: can JORDANLUCA SS24 be even better than its stellar Fall/Winter 2023 presentation?
Somehow, the London-based duo hasn’t just done it again — it showed a fully realized, completely conceptualized, utterly definitive portrayal of what JORDANLUCA is and who it speaks to.
For SS24, the creative duo took inspiration from the humble but mighty lipstick. The classic shade of red has connotations of power and performance, but also (per the brand), “blood, life, murder, sex and death.” These were the themes of the collection, as JORDANLUCA presented its first full womenswear range alongside foolproof menswear identities that will go on to define the label for the years to come.
It felt self-referential, but elevated. Familiar, but totally refreshing. Never one to not take risks, the designers opened its show with track pants decorated with lace bumsters up top. The Estonian rapper Tommy Cash also walked the show in two looks, delivering a haunched and ethereal aesthetic that matched the attitude of his horizontal-zipper short shorts and loose silk shirt, like he’d just left the XXX nightclub.
As it is the season of the halterneck (à la Fendi and others), JORDANLUCA delivered its take on the womenswear staple transformed into a men’s summer number. Here, the top glistened in sparkling fabrics and folds, all of which was subverted by the flipped and reversed neck hole attached to the bottom part of the garment.
Womenswear cues were injected into menswear heavily, as jeans were low-waisted and belted with a cowboy’s buckle and scoop necks dug deep into the chest on tight-fitting knitted sweaters.
However, this was also contrasted by traditions: pleated slacks, Western boots, sweater vests with overly-revealing armpit holes, and lace was used consistently. Yet even here there was a twist, as racy, lacey silk was used to craft tiny little harnesses sitting atop sleeveless shirts bearing oversized collars, and sheer womenswear co-ords decorated in floral motifs were contrasted by the use of latex suffocating arms.
JORDANLUCA is known for playing into fetishes and kinks. For SS24, it was much more adult and informed, and for that, the brand really found its nuance. Here’s what Bowen and Marchetto had to say about the collection themselves: